1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a modular laundry system comprising at least one laundry appliance and an associated worksurface and/or an optional shelf module that can be configured to spatially and functionally optimize a household laundry area.
2. Description of the Related Art
Most homeowners utilize laundry appliances, such as a washer and a dryer, to clean clothing and other fabric items. The laundry appliances are located in a household laundry area that can be a dedicated laundry room, a laundry closet, or part of another room or hallway of the home. A common complaint of homeowners is that the laundry area tends to be an afterthought when the home is designed. Many feel that the laundry area is small, poorly arranged, and inefficient.
Regardless of size, the laundry area is not optimized for performing functions other than the conventional washing and drying done in the washer and dryer, such as flat drying, hang drying, ironing, hand steaming, spot pre-treatment, stain removal, and the like. Laundry areas contain, at most, the washer and dryer and possibly a built-in sink and storage cabinets. This configuration meets the basic needs of doing laundry but neither provides facilities for performing other functions nor optimizes the process of doing laundry. Examples of functional deficiencies of the laundry area follow.
For example, some clothes need to be hung or laid flat to dry after washing, but there is usually no dedicated space for these items. Consequently, some people hang clothes along the top of doors, on door knobs, on hooks attached to the washer, and in other creative locations. Furthermore, to touch up a wrinkled clothing item, people have to set up the ironing board and the iron, usually outside the laundry room, and then let the iron cool and return the ironing board and the iron to its storage location after ironing. This process is extremely inconvenient and time consuming, especially if only one garment needs to be touched up. In addition, storage is a common shortcoming in laundry areas; detergents, fabric softeners, stain pre-treatment aids, delicate garment bags, and the like are often stored in locations distant from where they are actually used.
Additionally, the laundry area typically does not provide flat surfaces that can be employed for, for example, applying stain pre-treatments, flat drying clothing items, or for folding clothes after they have been dried. Conventional laundry appliances provide a flat surface, but the surface is not particularly suited for some of these tasks. Further, the space between horizontally arranged laundry appliances can be annoying if such tasks are conducted on top of the laundry appliances, and clothing items can fall in the space between the laundry appliances. These examples are only a few of the many deficiencies of the laundry area.
To address some of these problems, a hodgepodge of different gadgets, such as sweater racks, accordion hanging racks, rolling shelves, and rolling laundry carts that store ironing boards and the like, have been made commercially available. However, these solutions are not ideal; some are inconvenient to store when not in use, others are not dimensioned to optimize the space of the laundry area, and all are not aesthetically coherent with the laundry appliances.